Anyone have an idea of what's going on?

[lisab]

Four years ago, during a thunderstorm in the middle of the night, I heard transformers around our house blowing - pretty normal in our neighborhood, during a storm. Then I saw a bright light flash outside the window, and heard our electric garage door open. I woke up my husband, thinking maybe we had been hit by lightning. We investigated but couldn't find any obvious damage.

But we did find that half of our power outlets didn't have power. Then we heard one more transformer blow, and we lost the rest of our power.

Now fast-forward to last night. A windstorm hit about midnight. I'm a light sleeper, so I was wide awake, listening to the storm. Then I again heard transformers start blowing. I sat up, and saw a bright light outside our window. But it wasn't just a flash - it was a steady white, very bright light. It lasted about 4 seconds. There was some popping noises.

OK, now comes the weird part. The corner of the bedroom started glowing red-orange. I was absolutely startled - there's nothing in that corner but a pillow and a ficus tree. It had gone out by the time I could get out of bed - no noise at all. It lasted maybe 2 to 3 seconds. There was no charring, no smell either. I never saw the source of the light.

And like the first incident 4 years ago, half of our digital clocks were flashing, so they had momentarily lost power. But only half throughout the house.

Our house is on the middle of a slope, with houses above and below it. It's a newer neighborhood with utilities underground. The first incident, none of our neighbors noticed anything (guess they aren't light sleepers -- lucky!). I haven't yet talked to any neighbors about last night.

So - what the heck is going on? What could cause half the power in our house to go out? Would lightning cause an electric garage door to open?

But mostly, what in the world was that red-orange light?!?

 

[Mk]

That sounds pretty scary. Sounds like a plasmoid in the corner.

 

[wolram]

Could be ball lightning, it sounds very much a case for it.

 

[K.J.Healey]

Did you see the light outside for those 4 seconds? Did it reflect in anything into your eyes?

Seems to me sitting in the dark for an hour or so, then having a bright light shine outside for 4 seconds, possibly reflecting off of something in the room into my eyes, then looking in a corner could easily be similar to looking at a light then looking away(ghosting effect). The fact that it appeared only in the corner could have merely been because you looked there and didn't look away.

-Just trying to come up with most logical explanation for it.

 

[lisab]

Did you see the light outside for those 4 seconds? Did it reflect in anything into your eyes?

Seems to me sitting in the dark for an hour or so, then having a bright light shine outside for 4 seconds, possibly reflecting off of something in the room into my eyes, then looking in a corner could easily be similar to looking at a light then looking away(ghosting effect). The fact that it appeared only in the corner could have merely been because you looked there and didn't look away.

-Just trying to come up with most logical explanation for it.

I like that...quite possible!

 

[Astronuc]

So - what the heck is going on? What could cause half the power in our house to go out? Would lightning cause an electric garage door to open?

Two phases come into the house, and you probably lost one phase.

The voltage between phases is like 220/207 V and that's how one gets the 220/207 V for dryers and oven. The voltage between line and neutral is ~100/110V, and that is normal house current.

 

[Oerg]

Assuming that youe garage door opens to the outside, then maybe a pressure difference between the air in your garage and the wind outisde could have forced open your garage door.

Since half of your power was gone, maybe your transformers were hit again? I am not sure

 

[Moonbear]

I'd go with Astronuc's explanation for the half power outage thing, since he would understand that better than I. Unless, of course, you somehow have two different power lines supplying your house. I once worked in a building where only half the power would go out during storms (every other light in the hallway). Only our floor did that. It was some quirk of the building having both a power supply from the university power plant and another back-up supply from the municipal power. Our floor was the only one with this dual power supply, so the other floors either had power or didn't, while ours was half and half. I think it had to do with it being an old hospital building before being converted to lab space, so some floors that were critical care had redundant power supplies, but most had been converted over to just one or the other during some stage of renovations (we were on the former maternity ward...seems appropriate for folks studying reproductive sciences).

As for the garage door opening, possibly a power surge triggered it before or after the outage? You're lucky, whenever I have a power failure, the garage door is stuck shut. I've had to pop the garage door opener off and manually open the door, only to have power turn back on before I finish backing the car out.

I'd tend to chalk up the orange-ish glow to a reflection of some sort, as was already suggested.

 

[rewebster]

The ground is being charged (gathering charge is opposition) to the charge in the clouds. Sometimes there's a glow around transformers and sub-stations too. This isn't too unlike a solar storm, but it is different. The powers lines, whether in the ground or overhead transmit the charge and can cause fuses to blow, etc. The ground may be a little more conductive than a lot of other soils, too.

 

[G01]

Did you see the light outside for those 4 seconds? Did it reflect in anything into your eyes?

Seems to me sitting in the dark for an hour or so, then having a bright light shine outside for 4 seconds, possibly reflecting off of something in the room into my eyes, then looking in a corner could easily be similar to looking at a light then looking away(ghosting effect). The fact that it appeared only in the corner could have merely been because you looked there and didn't look away.

-Just trying to come up with most logical explanation for it.

I have to agree here. It may be that your eyes were still, what's the term, over exposed from the long flash.

Also, as Moonbear said, the Garage door could possibly have been triggered by a power surge. This has happened to my garage door once or twice as well.

 

[NateTG]

Some garage doors are set up so that they automatically open in the case of a power failure.

 

[binzing]

Great, so in NO after Katrina, some portion of them just opened right up for the looters.

 

[Moonbear]

Some garage doors are set up so that they automatically open in the case of a power failure.

How would that work? If the power has failed, how are they powered to open?

 

[binzing]

Spring system, I'd surmise.

 

[Poop-Loops]

Or possibly some charge stored some batteries that's triggered once power goes out?

 

[NateTG]

Or possibly some charge stored some batteries that's triggered once power goes out?

I think it's batteries. (I also think it's typically for parking structures rather than single car garages.)

 

[Moonbear]

I think it's batteries. (I also think it's typically for parking structures rather than single car garages.)

Ah, batteries would make sense, as would opening the gates on a parking structure rather than someone's home garage door (I'd be really annoyed if my garage door opened every time there was a power failure...we get a lot of power outages here due to nearby construction more so than storms). For home garage doors, there's a release pull/handle thingy to disconnect the door from the drive chain so you can open it in a power failure (or make it so someone can't kill the door opener/door by hitting the door opener button if you have locked the garage door).

 

[lisab]

Thanks everyone. I love logical people!

I told this incident to several folks (my secretary, my sister-in-law, my neighbor, etc.) and got several...well, non-logical explanations. Poltergeists, lost souls, and my favorite: pixies. Yes, pixies... my sister-in-law is sweet as can be and I love her to death, but she really does believe in "magic" !

 

[jim mcnamara]

The standard residential service in the US is 100amp 200V AC.

When you lose one phase, one side of your service panel loses power (the fuse box or circuit breaker thingy), so it looks like some stuff is on, other stuff is off.

If you saw bright light lasting for a few seconds it was a recloser
http://www.cooperpower.com/Products/Distribution/Reclosers/ doing its thing.
When transmission lines break and hit a ground the arc light lasts until the utility cuts power to the feeder. That can be many minutes.

 

[turbo]

I have to agree here. It may be that your eyes were still, what's the term, over exposed from the long flash.

Actually, this is the opposite of the physiological response to bright light. When your eyes are dark-adapted and you see a bright flash, the after image is a dark spot.

 

[turbo]

Two phases come into the house, and you probably lost one phase.

The voltage between phases is like 220/207 V and that's how one gets the 220/207 V for dryers and oven. The voltage between line and neutral is ~100/110V, and that is normal house current.

I'm confused about this part of the explanation. The primary coil of the transformer at the pole gets its power from only one phase at the pole, and the center-tapped secondary coil produces two-phase power to the house by referencing the voltage excursion around ground. So if she lost power to half the stuff in the house, either the secondary of the transformer was damaged or something in the house tripped one leg of the breaker box. If the transformer did not need to be repaired, I would ask the electric company for an explanation/inspection. Something isn't adding up.

If one leg of the service coming to the house was temporarily (at least partially) referenced to ground, it would have provided very low voltage to half of the outlets, and correspondingly high voltage to the other outlets, with some not-too-good effects on stuff that was using power. I once owned a house that was built during the transition from copper to aluminum mains wiring, and the ground clamp in the breaker box loosened a bit, causing the neutral to lose its reference to ground. This made lamps on one leg brighten, while lamps on the other leg dimmed when big loads like our chest freezer or refrigerator started or stopped. That took a lot of head-scratching to sort out - luckily, I've got an electrician brother-in-law that convinced me to suspect a poor ground-reference in my house rather than out at the transformer. Our transformer was in an underground vault, and I suspected water infiltration corrosion, etc.

 

[rewebster]

As far as the garage door, there may be some of those new safety measures in the sensing and electronics of why it opened.

Maybe the 'glow' was from light from one of the transformers. I once saw a sub-station through off sparks like a fireworks display with a lot of orange when an electrical strom passed over head and the substation didn't blow or have any trouble.--I called, they checked, then they left.

 

[Andre]

Necroposting to link to this thread. Could it be that the OP experienced something like that?

 

[lisab]

Necroposting to link to this thread. Could it be that the OP experienced something like that?

Interesting...not really sure if that was what was happening. In the thread you linked, the last post was a story of two people witnessing the same phenomenon, so that one was probably not caused by phosphenes.

 

[Loren Booda]

My friend had a stereo with two McIntosh 2300 amps which he had plugged into two separate house circuits.

 

[rhody]

Would lightning cause an electric garage door to open?

Lisa,

edit 6/25 changes in blue

Have had the garage door opener, LED's, either disabled or burned out by near strike lightning 4 times, three out of four times, I had to pull the bypass chord on the door, open manually, then check the red/green LED sensors usually one or both were out. First, I removed the positive wire from the lead (from the LED sensor), made sure the power was on, no big deal it is 12 volts, reattached the wire, if the LED relit, close the door, then pressed the open button, and the door worked, the forth time though one of the LED's couldn't take it. The LED would not come on and had to be replaced. Power off/on to the garage door and it fixed it. I never have had the door open because of lightning but heard of it before and now your situation. The bottom line is when both LEDs are in a normal (not faulted state they should be lit, one side red, the other green, if nothing is blocking their path, either it is a fault situation which you can reset by removing and attaching one of the wires to the LED, or a hard fault, and basically the LED is shot, I keep a spare or two around because it happens every year or two now so and I need to replace it. Have not had the situation where I had to replace the main head unit, but I have heard it does happen rarely as well.

The corner of the bedroom started glowing red-orange.

As far as the weird part, are you sure what you saw was real, not in your minds eye ? The brain can do funny things when startled like you were, if there was more than one of you, did you each see and report the same thing ? An exact second by second description providing more detail if you can recall it would be helpful. Maybe we can do like we did in the synesthesia thread with PF member, waht and localize his form of sound-> color partial synesthesia by asking a number of refining questions, until all possibilities were eliminated.

Rhody...